4 ms·

I'm not sure how people make it to the end of that article without being scared shitless about the future of newspapers. Newspapers have an incredibly importan

by Fede_V 12y ago

I'm not sure how people make it to the end of that article without being scared shitless about the future of newspapers. Newspapers have an incredibly important social function as muckrackers, exposing corruption, explaining politics, and breaking news. Even the New York Times, which is as good of a newspaper as you'll find these days has 'native advertising' which is virtually indistinguishable from regular articles.

mattdotc 12y ago
> Even the New York Times, which is as good of a newspaper as you'll find these days has 'native advertising' which is virtually indistinguishable from regular articles. I'd argue that the distinguishing feature would be the 'Paid Post' banner that remains at the top of the article, even as the reader scrolls. I know the writing style and content still resembles actual articles and it might be easy to miss this disclaimer if you're paying attention only to the content but it's only fair to mention that they do, in fact, label paid content as such.
jbob2000 12y ago
>Newspapers have an incredibly important social function as muckrackers, exposing corruption, explaining politics, and breaking news They USED to do that. Now they're owned by conglomerates and billionaires to parrot their ideals.
- nl 12y ago
  Yeah. I hate how these days they have descended to starting wears to sell papers[1]. Civilisation will collapse any day now. (To make it clear, the Spanish/American war was in 1898, and a major contributor to the cause was the battle for circulation between US newspapers.) [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish–American_War#Hearst_and_Pulitzer http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish–Ame...
  - nl 12y ago
    That's "starting wars" of course.
xefer 12y ago
People were saying similar things about USA Today when it debuted in 1982. They were castigated for simplifying the news, relying on bullet points, etc.; but from the perspective of 2014 it looks like they were well ahead of their time (for better or worse.)
TomGullen 12y ago
I don't think I should be particularly worried about newspapers future, you can still have good journalism without them.
TylerE 12y ago
Outside of a few bastions like the Times and WaPo, that sort of journalism has been dead for years. Local newspapers survive on the baby boomers who will still pay for their obits and coupons. Classified revenue has been decimated (in the correct sense of the word) by Ebay, Craigslist, and local facebook groups). It's a BAD situation - I spent several years recently working for a group of small local papers - this is all direct first hand knowledge.

by Fede_V 12y ago

mattdotc 12y ago

> Even the New York Times, which is as good of a newspaper as you'll find these days has 'native advertising' which is virtually indistinguishable from regular articles. I'd argue that the distinguishing feature would be the 'Paid Post' banner that remains at the top of the article, even as the reader scrolls. I know the writing style and content still resembles actual articles and it might be easy to miss this disclaimer if you're paying attention only to the content but it's only fair to mention that they do, in fact, label paid content as such.

jbob2000 12y ago

>Newspapers have an incredibly important social function as muckrackers, exposing corruption, explaining politics, and breaking news They USED to do that. Now they're owned by conglomerates and billionaires to parrot their ideals.

nl 12y ago
Yeah. I hate how these days they have descended to starting wears to sell papers[1]. Civilisation will collapse any day now. (To make it clear, the Spanish/American war was in 1898, and a major contributor to the cause was the battle for circulation between US newspapers.) [1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish–American_War#Hearst_and_Pulitzer http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish–Ame...
- nl 12y ago
  That's "starting wars" of course.

xefer 12y ago

People were saying similar things about USA Today when it debuted in 1982. They were castigated for simplifying the news, relying on bullet points, etc.; but from the perspective of 2014 it looks like they were well ahead of their time (for better or worse.)

TomGullen 12y ago

I don't think I should be particularly worried about newspapers future, you can still have good journalism without them.

TylerE 12y ago

Outside of a few bastions like the Times and WaPo, that sort of journalism has been dead for years. Local newspapers survive on the baby boomers who will still pay for their obits and coupons. Classified revenue has been decimated (in the correct sense of the word) by Ebay, Craigslist, and local facebook groups). It's a BAD situation - I spent several years recently working for a group of small local papers - this is all direct first hand knowledge.